Hiya
I will bring this thread back to life a bit due to a rather specific case:
Well, it turns out that there are discs with this Ring PROTECH protection that have CD Audio tracks and sometimes this protection is on the audio tracks (these are Fake Tracks, i.e. audio tracks not used by the game, but recorded so that the disc cannot be copied). Since, as we well know, Plextor or LG/ASUS drives are poorly suited for copying discs with ring protection, and the excess of a bad DIC is not able to even start dumping such a disc in any such drive, I wrote a guide based on my experience on such a disc. to astound
ATTENTION! THIS IS ONLY A PROPOSAL FOR DUMPING THESE DISCS! PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS YET UNTIL REDUMP'S MODERATION AND ADMINISTRATION ALLOW IT!
1. First, insert the disc into a redump-compatible drive (Plextor or LG/ASUS), run MPF/DIC and start dumping. Of course, as I mentioned, dumping will not start, but DIC will provide the write offset value, which you will have to provide when adding the disc to redump.org
2. Then remove the disc from the Plextor and insert it into the SOHD-167T drive
3. Run CloneCD and copy the disc in it (be sure to select "Protected PC Game" as the profile, then edit this profile and disable the "Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner" and "Fast Error Skip Settings" options, and before starting to rip the disc, enable the option to create cue sheet). Of course, save this file somewhere (Attention! Dumping such a disc may take up to 24 hours, just wait until it is finished, or leave the computer on overnight or something)
4. Then run the ECCEDC program in CMD with this command
"EccEdc check <location of sub file> <location of img file>"
(ATTENTION! IT IS IMPORTANT TO HAVE THE LATEST VERSION OF ECCEDC AS IT HAS INTRODUCED AUDIO SECTOR CORRECTNESS CHECK!)
EccEdc will save the results to a text file. Sectors with data that have this protection will be provided in this form
"2336 bytes have already been replaced at 0x55."
However, audio sectors will have the info "audio or invalid sync". Write down all sector ranges that have this information
5. Run CDArchive in CMD with this command
cdarchive.exe --mode=ext --extrdrive=<DriveLetter> --extrstart=<FIRSTRingSector> --extrend=<LASTRingSector> --extroverread=0 --extrretries=100 --extrskip=1000 --extrdirection=<f or b> --extrdiscmode="cd" --extrsectdir="<SectorExtractionDirectory>" --extrrefcue="<PathToIMAGE.cue>" and read the rest of the sectors as much as possible. When reading sectors, remember not to force it and if the drive cannot read a sector, move to the next one
6. If CDArchive has read any sectors, import them to the disc image with this command
cdarchive.exe --mode=mer --merdiscmode=cd --mersrcdir="<SectorExtractionDirectory>" --meroutcue="<PathToIMAGE.cue>"
7. Then turn on CDMage and run the disc image in it. In the "Action" tab, select "Scan for corruption", then click "Scan" and wait until CDMage scans the entire disc image for errors. Then select the "Repair corrupted sectors" option, select all sectors with errors and wait for CDMage to repair the errors (Note! CDMage may also display information that it has repaired 0 errors out of those it found)
8. (Only required if CDMage fixes any errors) Open the ECCEDC program in CMD with this command
ECCEDC fix <location of sub file> <location of img file>
This will fix sectors corrupted by a bug in CDMage (sectors filled with the 0x55 pattern CDMage edits and fills them with the 0x00 pattern, ECCEDC restores the correct pattern)
9. In ECCEDC, execute this command
ECCEDC check <location of sub file> <location of img file>
And note the sectors that have errors (both data and audio sectors)
10. Run BINmerge in CMD with this command
binmerge -s <location of cue file> <name of new files, can be the same as the name of the disc label>
11. Calculate hashes for bin files using an application like HashCalc or OpenHashTab (remember to calculate hashes for ALL separated bin files with prefix (Track 1) (Track 2) etc)
To calculate size, just pack all the bin files, e.g. in 7-zip, open the archive in 7-zip and the application will give the size of each bin file, then enter size without spaces.
12. Add the disc to redump.org including the newly calculated hashes and ring protected sector ranges
That's it. I would like to ask the redump moderator and administration to comment on this topic whether such a possible guide would be OK for you.
Thank you very much in advance